Red Bull’s Canada F1 protest was ‘petty and embarrassing’ – Mercedes

Mercedes Formula 1 boss Toto Wolff has slammed Red Bull for protesting against George Russell’s Canadian Grand Prix victory, calling the move “embarrassing”.

Russell took his and Mercedes’ first grand prix victory of 2025, defeating Red Bull’s Max Verstappen in Montreal in a race that ended behind the safety car due to Lando Norris’ crash.

But after the race Red Bull launched a two-pronged protest against Russell for alleged infractions under that late safety car. Russell was felt to have driven erratically to force Verstappen to overshoot him, and then called the Dutchman out on the radio, which was alleged to be unsportsmanlike behaviour.

He was also felt to have left more than 10 car lengths behind the safety car on separate occasions, but that protest was pulled as Russell was simply following the delta times on his steering wheel and the safety car accelerated.

Speaking at the F1 Movie premiere in New York, Wolff said Red Bull’s late protest, which meant the final result was only confirmed five hours after the race late on Sunday night, was “embarrassing” from his rivals.

“First of all, it took team Red Bull Racing two hours before they launched the protest, so that was in their doing. Honestly, it’s so petty and so small,” Wolff told Sky Sports. “They’ve done it in Miami. Now they launched two protests. They took one back because it was ridiculous.

“They come up with some weird clauses, what they call clauses. I guess the FIA needs to look at that, because it’s so far-fetched it was rejected. You race, you win, and you lose on track. That was a fair victory for us, like so many they had in the past. And it’s just embarrassing.”

Wolff said he was sure Verstappen himself disagreed with the protest too.

“It took us five hours because I don’t even know what you refer to as ‘unsportsmanlike behaviour’ or something,” he added. “What is it all about? Who decides it? Because I’m 100 percent sure it’s not Max, he’s a racer. He would never go for a protest on such a trivial thing.”

When asked whether he regretted launching the protest, Red Bull boss Christian Horner told Sky: “No, absolutely not. It’s a team’s right to do so. We saw something we didn’t think was quite right.

“You have the ability to put it in front of the stewards and so that’s what we chose to do. Absolutely no regrets in that.”

The FIA threw out the protest, sharing Russell’s view that periodic braking behind the safety car is very common and to be expected in order to put heat into the tyres. It also didn’t feel that simply stating Verstappen was overshooting him was an attempt by Russell to get his rival in trouble.

Verstappen remains one penalty point away from a one-race ban, with Horner telling the press on Sunday he had alerted the FIA to any potential gamesmanship by the Dutchman’s rivals to try and goad him into a mistake.

“It’s inevitable that there was going to be some potential gamesmanship,” said Horner. “It’s something that we raised after the driver’s briefing with the race director just so that they were mindful of it as well because, it’s clear that that kind of stuff goes on. But Max, I thought he’s been squeaky clean all weekend and drove a very good race.

“We just said to them ‘look, could they please keep an eye on it because there’s been obviously comments that have been raised in the media. Just please keep an eye on it’.”